


Forever Doesn't Depend on Burnt Risotto

by DjDangerLove



Series: Tarlos March Madness [7]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Protective Carlos Reyes, Supportive TK Strand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29903148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/pseuds/DjDangerLove
Summary: Their love for him, imperfect as it may have been, had been enough to carry the burden of silence.Up until now, that is. Until the second Carlos' father with flawed love and a hard way of showing it stepped through the front door and directed it at TK. “But I meant what I said earlier. This is my house and one day, I hope TK feels comfortable enough to call it his.”Or: Carlos invites his parents over for dinner to finally introduce them to TK, his boyfriend.
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: Tarlos March Madness [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189232
Comments: 24
Kudos: 310





	Forever Doesn't Depend on Burnt Risotto

**Author's Note:**

> Tarlos March Madness #7 of 31

The cacophony of silverware against glass dishes echoes in the silence surrounding the dining table, the sound of his father’s quick, aggressive chewing the only thing competing for attention. Carlos, fork in hand only to stir his serving of the burnt risotto he spent two hours trying to get right, is only able to refrain from saying something he can’t take back by TK’s calming hand running slowly across his thigh under the table. 

His mother clears her throat, wiping her mouth with her napkin, before breaking the awkward silence that settled over the house the moment his parents knocked on the front door. 

“So, TK?”

Carlos feels TK’s hand come to an abrupt stop, his fingers curling slightly around his leg. He drops his free hand below the table and squeezes back. 

“Do you…live here, too?”

The pressure around his leg eases as TK opens his mouth to respond, but it’s Gabriel’s voice that falls over the table in an incoherent grumble, the legs of his chair scraping against the floor as he stands. The flinch he feels TK give at his father’s abrupt movements makes a fire erupt across his chest as Gabriel makes a quick exit out the back door. 

TK flinches again at the door slamming shut and it forces Carlos to his feet. 

“Honey-“

“No,” and if he uses the tone he reserves for suspects who disrespect the courtesy he approaches them with on his mother, then he only sees it justified. He invited them into his home, into a deeper part of his life, and here they are ridiculing it. 

His mother looks apologetic, if not scorned, and he knows that will settle heavy on his shoulders after the dust settles, but right now the fury burning through him turns the weight to ashes. 

“No, Mamá.” He lets his decision sink into his bones, feels it settle there with roots he has longed to put down and looks her in the eyes. “Not anymore.”

He squeezes TK’s shoulder, drops a kiss to the top of his head uncaring of the way his mother’s gaze stalks him, and then follows after his father. 

—————————

_An hour earlier…_

Standing in the kitchen, hip digging painfully into the corner of the island as he watches his own anxious energy mirrored back at him, TK feels guilt settle heavy in his belly. It turns the delicious aroma of risotto cooking on the stove smell pungent atrocious even though it's one of Carlos' best dishes. 

“Are you sure I can’t help with anything?” He asks, trying not to let it bother him that Carlos drops the spoon he’s using at the sound of his voice. His boyfriend curses under his breath, but it carries over the sound of the vent hood fan slowly turning above the stove. Dabbing at a splatter from the spoon now staining the dress shirt he had carefully picked out, Carlos turns to him with a scowl. 

“You can make sure the risotto doesn’t burn while I change my shirt,” Carlos points to the giant spot distorting the light blue of cotton threads as if TK couldn’t see it from a mile away. TK starts to apologize but the furious way Carlos tosses the hand towel down on the counter and heads for the stairs without another word makes him eat the words. 

He takes a deep breath, trying to remind himself that he’s not the person Carlos is angry or annoyed with and goes about cleaning off the spoon Carlos dropped when it doesn’t quite work. He stirs the risotto hoping that it’s what he’s supposed to do, because he doesn’t have any idea what the dish’s consistency is meant to look like when it’s done. If it burns anyway, he’ll just add it to the long list of things he’s screwed up. 

He can’t help but feel that Carlos’ nervousness, frustration, and anxiety is his fault even though he hasn’t brought up the topic of the man’s parents since the farmer’s market fiasco. Still, today has been a string of saying the wrong things and messing things up and he’s not so sure that he’s going to have a boyfriend by the end of the night if Mr. and Mrs. Reyes don’t approve. 

He loses track of time in his self-deprecating thoughts, therefore is startled when strong arms wrap around his stomach and an apologetic kiss is placed on his shoulder. 

“I’m so sorry, TK,” Carlos says, the words heavy in the other man’s mouth but making TK feel lighter by the second. “I’ve been awful to you today and that’s not how I wanted this day to go.”

“Then tell them not to come,” TK folds his arms over Carlos’ and tries to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice. “I told you to take all the time you need.”

“That’s not it.” Carlos pulls away from TK and settles against the kitchen counter with a heavy sigh. TK notes that the shirt he’s changed into is much more casual than the one before and he didn’t bother taming his curls again from where he’d run his fingers through them several times. “I kept telling myself that if everything was perfect, they’d have no reason to make a fuss about anything, but that just feels like another lie.”

TK stiffens, unsure of what exactly Carlos is getting at. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, the way I made you move your shoes from under the table where you always put them or how I took down our sticky notes we’ve left each other from the fridge. I love you more than anything, TK, and it kills me that I keep letting the fear of losing my parents make you doubt that.”

“The only way this stops tormenting you is to face it head on. You know that, right?”

“Which is why they're coming over for dinner tonight and I’m having a nervous breakdown over every possible what if scenario,” Carlos admits sheepishly.

TK takes pity on him and sighs, “Well, if they complain about the food you can just say I made it. There’s one less thing you have to worry about.”

Carlos snorts at that, a bit of his usual self bleeding back to the surface. “I’d already planed on doing that regardless. What else you got?”

TK feigns offense, picking up the dishtowel and swatting at Carlos’ legs with it. “Asshole.”

Carlos catches the dishtowel as it smacks across his thighs and uses it to pull TK against him. 

“I was willing to play my recovering drug addict card at the first negative word about you being gay, because I figured that would be more scandalous but you can forget it.”

“You’re an idiot,” Carlos says and kisses him through a laugh. “But I love you anyway.”

“That’s good, because I’m pretty sure the risotto is burnt.”

——————

Carlos steps out onto the patio, shutting the door gently where his father had slammed it moments before. He finds Gabriel sitting on the steps leading down to the yard, his cowboy hat resting on the rail. Head hung low, his father looks like a shadow of the man Carlos has looked up to his entire life. Maybe it’s the missing hat, or maybe it’s because the imperfections Carlos has always known to be there since he was seventeen are visibly evident now. 

“This is my home, Dad,” he says, voice betraying the war raging inside of him as he passes his father on the steps to stand on the landing. He turns to face him with a steady determination. “It’s mine which means you don’t get to come here and do whatever this is.”

Gabriel’s head raises at that, quick and unburdened by whatever hung it before. A jolt of anger strikes the inside of Carlos’ chest at the thought, igniting a jealousy that he’s never known before. Carlos laughs, but the bitter emotion stains it. 

“You know, I’ve wanted to call you so many times in the last year,” he admits, tongue loose with an honesty he’s come to learn by loving someone enough to know why it matters. “When we started out, I didn’t know how to love him, not in the way he needed, but…I knew I wanted to.”

Gabriel comes to stand in front of him, eyes shiny with an emotion that feels unfairly mirrored. Carlos crosses his arms, but doesn’t back down. “The crazy thing is I wanted your advice and now…now I just, I don’t understand why, because you didn’t know how to love me either. Not openly and honestly, anyway, and you never bothered to figure it out.”

Gabriel flinches like it stings and Carlos feels a little drunk on the satisfaction. 

“Carlos, that’s not-“

“You’re going to deny this, too?” Carlos asks, taking a step back when his father takes one forward. “Are you ever going to look me in the eye for who I am?”

“How can I?” The question shakes the solid ground Carlos built himself to stand on. It’s one thing to strike first and mean it. Another entirely to take the blow you’ve been dealt before. “When I don’t even know who you really are?”

“Yeah? And whose fault is that?”

“Carlos, please just listen to me,” Gabriel begs and this time when he steps forward Carlos doesn’t move back. He feels his father’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, but it quivers the same way his mouth does and eventually comes to the side of his neck. 

“You’re right,” his father admits and Carlos hears the pain it causes him to do so. “Maybe I…no, I didn’t know how to love you after you told us, but I _always_ loved you even if it wasn’t the right way.”

Carlos bites his lip, lets the metallic taste of blood linger on his tongue. “I know you did.” It’s the truth, even if it takes the wind out of the his sails just a bit. But that’s just it, isn’t it? Their love for him, imperfect as it may have been, had been enough to carry the burden of silence. 

Up until now, that is. Until the second his father with flawed love and a hard way of showing it stepped through the front door and directed it at TK. “But I meant what I said earlier. This is my house and one day, I hope TK feels comfortable enough to call it his.” He pushes his father’s hand away from where it had dropped back to his shoulder and squares his stance. 

His dad lets out a soft chuckle as if they hadn’t just speared each other open with an honesty held back for eleven years. “Another misunderstanding on my part. I’ve racked up a lot of those over the years and I can only hope you’ll let me correct them, starting with this one.”

Carlos raises an eyebrow at him as if to challenge him, but Gabriel still grins albeit a little sad. 

“We’ve missed so much of your life, and I know that’s on us, but the thought of you finding _the one_ and knowing it…I never wanted to miss that part of you life before…or after you told us you were gay, and I have.”

“Dad-“ Carlos’ brain short circuits, a million things trying to compute at once. “We’re not- he’s- it’s-“

“Oh!” Gabriel exclaims while patting at Carlos’ cheek. “It very much is like that.”

Carlos huffs with more amusement than he wants to feel. He tries to hold onto his anger, his hurt, and strikes out again. “So you spend eleven years ignoring my love life, but can suddenly tell I’ve found the one I want to spend the rest of my life with?”

His father’s face falls, a spitting image of the man he found sitting out here a few minutes ago, and he drops back down to sit on the steps. Carlos moves to do the same, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in a silence they’ve always shared since he was seventeen. 

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel says, and even though Carlos deliberately struck him with words, his father doesn’t hesitate to put his arm around him. “For everything.”

Carlos falls against him, head on his shoulder and feeling burdened with his father’s forgiveness. The past eleven years make it hard to give it so easily, but his entire life, no matter how imperfect, makes it impossible not to. “I love you.’

He feels his father press a rare kiss to the top of his head. “I’ve always loved you and always will, but from now on I’m going to do a better job of showing it.” 

Silence falls over them again, but it’s comforting where it never was before. It’s broken a few seconds later by the sound of his mother’s loud cackle drifting from inside the house. 

“Should we go save your boy from your mother now?” HIs father asks, and Carlos sits up but doesn’t move as the sound of TK’s laugh fills in the gaps his mother leaves quiet. 

“You were right before,” Carlos says instead, grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “TK is the one.”

Gabriel pulls him back in, rougher this time with a playful hand rubbing across his head before he drops another kiss there. “Then we definitely better get in there before the two of them become best friends and start plotting against us.”

———————

Walking back through the door, Carlos finds the kitchen spotless, the dinning room table clear, and his mother and his boyfriend sitting side by side on the couch giggling at whatever is on Andrea’s phone lit up between them.

“We’re too late,” his father whispers in his ear as they come to stand in the living area. TK, wary of his father’s gaze, glances up at Carlos with concern despite the happiness radiating off of him. Carlos nods once, offering him a lopsided smile before demanding what on earth his mother is showing on her phone. 

“You’re very handsome in a cowboy hat, Carlos,” TK offers as an explanation, pointing to Andrea’s phone with a delighted laugh. “But, uh…these chaps are doing nothing for me.”

“Oh, God, Mamá! Really?”

“What? We had to do something to pass the time,” Andrea defends, patting TK’s leg and swiping to another picture that throws TK into another fit of laughter that shouldn’t be as adorable as Carlos is finding it to be.

The next hour passes much the same, his parents doing absolutely everything they can to remember every embarrassing story of him to pass along to his boyfriend while TK leans against him, fingers intertwined and squeezing hard like he knows this is too much too soon for Carlos.

It isn’t until long after his parents have left and he’s getting ready for bed that TK brings up the topic of his parents. He leans against the doorframe of the bathroom, arms crossed and hoodie string dangling from his mouth where he nibbles on the plastic aglet, and watches Carlos brush his teeth. 

“That went well,” TK gives an uptick to the last word, unsure whether or not it’s actually true. Carlos hurriedly finishes rinsing the toothpaste out of his mouth and putting away his toothbrush before crossing the two steps to the threshold to take TK in his arms. 

“Actually,” he says, holding TK tight when he feels a thrum of anxiety still eating away at the man in his arms. “It ended up alright.”

TK’s nose is cold against his neck, fingers even more so when moves them to rub up under the back of Carlos’ shirt, but TK’s next words warm him from the inside out. “Are you okay?” 

“With you here,” he nuzzles TK’s throat, dropping featherlight kisses in a trail down the side of it and moving his hoodie just enough to end it at the scar marking the bullet wound from months ago that still decides to ache from time to time. “Always.”

He feels TK hug him harder, blunt fingernails digging into his skin even as he teases, “Sap.”

“I’m okay, I’ll tell you about our conversation later. Right now, I just really want to be here with you.”

He feels TK’s hand drift up to the back of his head and softly tousle his loose curls as their bodies start to sway ever so gently. “I’m always going to be here.”

It hits Carlos then, the question that set it all in motion at dinner. He remembers placing their sticky notes back on the fridge before his parents came and putting TK’s sneakers under the table by the stairs. He remembers standing over the burnt risotto laughing as TK rambled on about how long it would take to order a delivery from the Italian place across town and shutting him up with a kiss and a, “Babe, it’s perfect. Either they accept us and make fun of us for it for the rest of our lives or they don’t and we never eat risotto again.”

“But I like risotto,” TK had protested, face scrunched adorably and still trying to somehow save the dish by poking it with the spoon. Carlos had reached out, commandeered the utensil and TK’s attention by asking, “More than me?”

TK just blinked back at him for a minute, long enough Carlos started to frown, but then bit at the smile trying to spread across his face, “Oh, do you need an answer like now or can I think about it?”

“I’ll give you something to think about,” Carlos had growled, playfully mouthing at the side of TK’s neck while tickling his sides. 

Standing here now, Carlos can’t imagine coming home to anything other than ridiculously bright colored sticky notes on his fridge, shoes in all the wrong places, and the love of the man in his arms. He hopes TK wants the same thing. 

“About you always being here, if you want-“ he starts to ask, but TK cuts him off with hard pressed fingers to his back and a quick, “Don’t.”

Pain comes back tenfold, until TK kisses his neck, his cheek, then his mouth. “Don’t ask me tonight,” he elaborates, leaning back just enough to hold Carlos’ face between his hands and soothe the corners of his frown with his thumbs. “We have every day to make a moment special. I want you to keep this one with just your parents.”

TK’s love settles over him, heavy and warm, and Carlos picks him up, smiling at the surprised laugh ghosting across his skin and drops them down on to the bed. Tk grins up at him, hands smelling like dish soap coming to rest on Carlos’ jawline as he says, “I love you, you know.”

The love Carlos was afraid of never holding in his hands or feeling in his heart at seventeen overwhelms him now at twenty-eight and he hopes that he gets to keep it forever. 

He leans down and kisses TK long and slow and just on the right side of desperate. Pulling back, Carlos drags his hand through TK’s hair, voice giddy as he promises, “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos are appreciated. Comments are food.  
> Come find me @ DjDangerLove on tumblr


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